Contextlens

Social media feeds shape how people encounter information, yet viewers often lack visibility into how frequently they are exposed to the same content or where circulating footage originated. ContextLens and OriginTrace are two complementary applications we designed to make digital media consumption more transparent, contextual, and user-controlled. ContextLens is a Chrome extension that identifies repeated exposure to specific challenges, products, campaigns, or trends across different social media videos. Using multimodal AI, it recognizes recurring phenomena even when creators and recording conditions differ. Viewers can define repetition thresholds, choose whether to count unique posts or accounts, and decide whether to continue watching once matching content is paused and blurred. OriginTrace is a web application that investigates video footage using visual clues, captions, transcripts, related web sources, and available publication metadata. It organizes findings into content-category visualizations, footage and contextual timelines, and expandable evidence reports. By distinguishing verified footage matches from related reporting and uncertain claims, OriginTrace helps users understand what evidence helps establish about a video's history. The two applications are connected through a user-initiated investigation workflow. ContextLens identifies recurring content during browsing, while OriginTrace provides deeper contextual analysis when users choose to investigate. Together, they explore how AI can support informed media consumption without automatically deciding what users should watch or believe.